Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga

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Four Formulae For Describing the Ideals of the Yoga

Sri Aurobindo has distilled out four concepts or formulae that describe the ideal of the Integral Yoga.

First, “To live in God and not in the ego…” Second, “To be perfectly equal in all happenings and to all beings and to see and feel them as one with oneself and one with the Divine…” Third, “To act in God and not in the ego.” Fourth, “…to be exalted into an identity in knowledge, force, consciousness, act, joy of existence with the Divine Shakti…”

To live in God and not the ego requires a change in the basic standpoint from which we live and act. The limited and fragmented ego-consciousness must be abandoned and the soul then can live and act in the universal and the transcendent that establishes it as an individual cell of the unity of the entire manifesetation.

To be perfectly equal implies that we are not judging according to the terms of the dualistic consciousness that we use in our normal mental framework. We recognize that the entire manifestation is one unified whole, determined by God and manifesting God in all creatures, events and in the relation of one to all.

To act in God and not in the ego indicates that our own limited needs, desires, wants and viewpoints no longer govern the course of our actions; rather we see and act in reference to the larger universal manifestation and its goals and purposes. The reference point for action has thus been shifted from ego to universal. “…as soon as we are sufficiently founded in the spiritual consciousness, not to act any longer by our separate will or movement, but more and more to allow action to happen and develop under the impulsion and guidance of a divine Will that surpasses us.”

To be exalted into an identity with the Divine Shakti means “to feel a dynamic movement not dominated by mortal desire and vital instinct and impulse and illusive mental free will, but luminously conceived and evolved into an immortal self-delight and an infinite self-knowledge. For this is the action that comes by a conscious subjection and merging of the natural man into the divine Self and eternal Spirit; it is the Spirit that for ever transcends and guides this world-Nature.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part One: The Yoga of Divine Works, Chapter 3, Self-Surrender in Works–The Way of the Gita, pp. 93-94